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Is it worth getting into video games?
  • Worth getting into? Absolutely. It can be very cheap, too.

    Where to start? That's the trick question. It will depend on whether you start with console or PC, the latter having a much more extensive catalogue of games, plus emulation of older systems.

    My personal recommendation is getting a PC, it doesn't even need to be a gamer one, anything that isn't a piece of shit and was released in the past 4 or so years will do good for playing low end games and emulate anything up to N64 and possibly Dreamcast games (2003 and earlier). You can use a variety of console controllers on computer, so it's fine. Whe searching for ROMs, be sure to have uBlock Origin installed on your web browser.

    If you have any friends, talk to them, see what they're playing or would recommend you to play. If you don't, download steam and download demos of games that look somewhat interesting to you. Check GOG as well, it tends to have some older PC games as well, plus demos and whatnot.

    Try out a variety of genres. It's possible one game of a certain genre might not "click" with you, but another might.

  • The GOG Preservation Program Makes Games Live Forever
  • I probably own a significant portion of those games in my GOG account, I'll double check when I'm home

  • Why do People Choose BlueSky Over Mastodon?
  • Bluesky has brand recognition (founded by the same dude as Twitter), more people and "feels like twitter", in the sense of what you see, more than mastodon. Also, news outlets seem to be migrating there.

    Mastodon (and pleroma, misskey, etc) is seen as a place for weirdos and techies, with "nothing interesting going on". Several people mentioned this already one way or another, but that most servers/instances are "specific" about whatever means that people will feel that they might miss out on something by choosing the wrong server.

  • People Have A Hard Time With Change — But Electric Vehicles Will Dominate By 2030
  • Alternative title: electric cars will dominate by the time it's too fucking late for it to matter.

  • Is it really possible to tax the rich?
  • In my limited understanding, yes, it's possible. But it would require significant international effort to get the super rich, the ones that can pay fabulous amounts of money to money launderers legal tax experts that know just the right loophole to ensure that mr. billionaire will pay only 500k in taxes rather than 10 million, because tax havens only exist thanks to certain countries' very lax rules on banking.

  • Bluesky Might End Up Defeating Twitter Once and for All
  • Ha ha ha, yeah, sure. Bluesky won't defeat xitter, at best it'll just be the "next thing" once xitter finally finishes getting rid of most of its users, which I guess will take more than 4 years from now.

  • None. Suffer.
  • You're completely ignoring the point that being decentralized and/or implementing hash trees does not make a system trustless

  • None. Suffer.
  • Not being centralized has nothing to do with being trustless. The fediverse is also decentralized, yet you, me and everyone else has to log in to a specific server. If I try to login via lemmy.world, it'll fail. I have to login via programming.dev. Does that make lemmy and the fediverse trustless? No.

    Even the top answer on that SO question explains that the use case of hash trees for git is different from that of blockchain

  • Solve the climate emergency... in Minecraft
  • The genie forgot to turn the wisher into a raccoon

  • Meta to introduce Ads on Threads in 2025 in move surprising no one.
  • How could those two suspiciously familiar faces with light violet and wine colored hairs possibly be Jessie and James from Team Rocket???

  • None. Suffer.
  • Right, but isn’t the “main chain” of Ethereum based on a similar principle wherein it’s the main chain because it’s the one the devs use?

    No clue, I don't keep an eye on that, I'm partially aware that there are several similar forks (and eth classic was a result of scammy shenanigans) but, afaict, none try to pretend they're the "real" ethereum.

    I’m genuinely failing to see a distinction here

    A distinction between trust and trustless? Because my initial point was that git isn't trustless, because it works just like any other online system that requires a login, where a central server/database checks if the user sending inputs was properly identified by some mean (password, cryptographic key, something else). Implementing a Merkle or any other hash tree doesn't make something trustless

  • Excluding all games you have seen mentioned by anyone on the internet, what is your favorite game?
  • Excluding all games you have seen mentioned by anyone on the internet

    Well, shit, that makes my list really, really fucking small.

    I guess Clutch? Literally never seen anyone mention it before, cheap carmageddon clone

  • Excluding all games you have seen mentioned by anyone on the internet, what is your favorite game?
  • I saw that name and thought "isn't that a PS2 game?" - then I checked, it's Urban Reign the one I thought about.

  • None. Suffer.
  • How is it any different than verifying that a transaction occurred?

    With a centralized trust source (bank), you ask for the records.

    How is a trusted repository different from a hard fork?

    Because you check who owns and maintains it. A notable example was with Simple Apps for Android, earlier this year the main repo was sold to a company. Trust was lost, thus a fork was created to keep the original stuff.

  • None. Suffer.
  • It’s trust less in the sense that commits can’t be easily forged and are signed with cryptographic keys and identities.

    I'm pretty sure being able to verify that the person responsible for a push is an actual maintainer is the opposite of trustless.

  • Use i2p on Android with Mull/Firefox
  • Neat, I might set up one of my older, currently unused phones to be my host. As soon as I figure something I want to share around

  • Black Bloc: The Quick & Dirty
  • Around here (Brazil), during manifestations, the police will search every bag they can see. While the clothes alone are obviously "nothing", I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with bullshit reasons to take you away or keep a very close eye on you, or if some damning evidence "magically" appeared.

  • Skyrim Is 13 Years Old, But Elder Scrolls 6 Is Nowhere in Sight While Bethesda’s First Four Games Took Only 12 Years
  • Their "open arms" has felt like a vampiric embrace for almost a decade now, because they would really, really, really prefer if modders released stuff via their club, where modders can get money and they also get a slice for free.

    The bigger PC names of the 90s and early 2000s were all welcoming to modding, with some games shipping with the "official editor tools" for anyone to mess around with (UT99 and Warcraft 3 come to mind)

  • Skyrim Is 13 Years Old, But Elder Scrolls 6 Is Nowhere in Sight While Bethesda’s First Four Games Took Only 12 Years
  • It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out.

    The big irony here is that they could damn well make weights for the procgen to create spots with dense "habitation" and others with zero points of interest. But nope, just generate a map, plop down 5-8 POI, call it a day. The "big cities" like New Atlantis stand out in the worst way possible, a small square of buildings surrounded by absolutely fucking nothing. They effectively copied the worst aspects of No Man's Sky

  • Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images?

    I mean, you take one look at Greek statues and Roman busts and you realize that people figured how to aim for realism, at least when it came to the human body and faces, over 2000 years ago.

    Yet, unlike sculpture, paintings and drawings remained, uh, "immature" for centuries afterwards (to my limited knowledge, it was the Italian Renaissance that started making realistic paintings). Why?

    48
    Maybe all this AI bullshit might finally push people to touch grass and interact face to face some more

    Given how harder it's becoming to tell apart AI slop from something made by a human (videos, photos, text), and how much scammers and other criminals are piling up on the tech, I'm thinking this will be the silver lining, making some people pay more attention to real life and finally accept the maxim "Don't believe everything you see on the internet"

    24
    TIL: Being intellectually gifted is a spectrum of neurodivergence and does not automatically mean the person is/will be a genius in anything

    Other points:

    • it's not mutually exclusive with any other neurodivergence, in which case they're "twice exceptional";
    • In an environment with unprepared people and professionals, they may be wrongly diagnosed as having some other neurodivergence.
    • It's not just a high IQ score;
    • Gifted kids can be problem students and have low grades;
    • Homework feels like torture (this is true to any child, tho);
    • They're very likely to question authorities and point out perceived hypocrisy (emphasis here on perceived, because pointing something and being right are different things);
    • As kids, they may have weird quirks for executing tasks, such as wanting to hold pencils the "wrong" way, or wanting to press against a wall to do homework;

    If you're Brazilian or can understand Brazilian Portuguese, this is the podcast I listened to - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apnuIIePeeA

    Aos brasileiros que acabarem encontrando esse post, o podcast que assisti é o que linkei acima

    40
    "Open Source" or similarly licensed boardgames?

    I've been interested in checking out some "DIY" boardgames, ones that you could just print the pieces/sheets/cards/tokens/etc and play.

    I'm mostly interested in boardgames that can be played with 4+ people and require little setup or rules introduction, as I'm pretty much being the "gateway drug" for the group (everyone I've shown Blokus so far has loved the game).

    I'm ok with knowing about heavy games (stuff that takes an afternoon to finish) to keep an eye on for future reference

    7
    You can go from Cuiabá (Mato Grosso, Brazil) all the way to the sea, over 2800km, by river boat

    I've been reading a book on the Paraguay War, Maldita Guerra, and it mentioned how Solano Lopez (then Paraguay's dictator) planned to invade Mato Grosso and possibly take Cuiabá. Trips upstream from Assuncion to Cuiabá at that time would usually take 12+ days on steam ships.

    What really surprised me is that this kind of information was supposed to be taught back when I was in school.

    0
    Why haven't more people attempted to create chat/IM clients out of e-mail services?

    Some weeks ago, I've come across Delta Chat, whose main thing is "(near) instant messaging using your email"

    That left me thinking, has this been attempted before? If not, why? Also, why (besides servers' limitations as means to fight spam) isn't this solution used more often, given that e-mail has been a decentralized solution for well over 40 years now?

    16
    How do you make untextured Polygon2D cast small shadows?

    I'm thinking about making a character entirely out of Polygon2D nodes without textures. One thing I haven't figured out how to do is make each polygon cast a "permanent" shadow on top of the ones that are Z levels below it.

    Below is an image of what I want to do, but using shaders/lights. I've only managed to do this by making extra polygons to fill in as the shadows.

    !

    !

    How exactly do I have to set up a light source to achieve this effect? Using a DirectionalLight2D or a PointLight2D just brightens the polygons and I can't figure how to use a LightOccluder2D, or even if this is the correct way to get this result

    !

    (The polygons are green due to the DirectionalLight being green) - The occlusion simply applies the shadow on anything that is Z levels below it.

    3
    Simple app for making midi-like music? Music sequencer?

    I'm looking for something that "a child would find easy to learn", possibly a virtual keyboard with an obvious "start recording" button that does that, recording your keys on the selected Track, then allowing easy playback so you can listen to it.

    4
    Tennis uses the imperial system of scoring

    Tennis uses multiples of 15, but only up to 45, calls other points weird names, then closes a set, which has to be repeated at least 6 times for a separate scoring, with said scoring also needing to be repeated AT LEAST 3 more times, but can be dragged out ad infinitum.

    Even table tennis has the decency of using a straight scoring system where 11 points wins a set and 2 sets wins the match.

    11
    How do you "separate" or "explode" a 3D mesh in Godot?

    I'd like to create an effect similar to 2 death animations that exist in Crash Bandicoot 3.

    In one of them, Crash is disintegrated: all the triangle faces get separated and fly apart. A similar triangle separation is seen when he dies from fire, the triangles fall separately.

    The second is a simple separation of the legs and torso. One enemy that exists in the 1st stage can cut Crash in half, which will cause the torso to stay in place while the legs walk away.

    9
    I swear I check them often enough!

    Transcription:

    Text: My browser when I open the 42nd tab and beyond

    A 2 panel image of Michael Jordan: Stop it. Get some help.

    56
    How often do you consume the stuff you pirate? How do you avoid "hoarding"?

    Asking mostly because I have fuckloads of video courses, plus a number of movies, that I have yet to even check if the content is as good as their titles imply and I really feel like I'm mostly hoarding this stuff because I have no fucking clue.

    91
    Users of Vim and similars, what exactly makes it useful compared to other text editors? How much time do you suppose you save when working with it?

    I'd like actual examples instead of "I work faster", something like "I can move straight to the middle of the file with 7mv" or "I can keep 4 different text snippets in memory and paste each with a number+pt, like 2pt", things that you actually use somewhat frequently instead of what you can do, but probably only did once.

    62
    The company behind Pixel Game Maker will use Godot as a base for their next engine, Action Game Maker
    store.steampowered.com ACTION GAME MAKER - First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER - Steam News

    First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER Hello everyone, my name is Morino and I am the producer for ACTION GAME MAKER. I’m planning to do a series of these letters as we move towards ACTION GAME MAKER’s release, and I’d like to start off by providing some information about our thoughts regardi...

    ACTION GAME MAKER - First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER - Steam News

    cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/16870410

    > > However, despite all the attention Godot has been receiving, the switch from Godot 3 to Godot 4 called for the removal of Godot’s visual scripting system. This presented us with an amazing opportunity. We knew we needed to provide more to our users, and now Godot was lacking in a function that we know really well! And that’s how the current plan was kicked off. > > Makes me wonder if they'll do something similar for RPG Maker if AGM does well enough commercially, since the RPG Maker Unite, which was supposed to work with Unity, died thanks to that charge the devs per-install kerfuffle.

    5
    The company behind Pixel Game Maker will use Godot as a base for their next engine, Action Game Maker
    store.steampowered.com ACTION GAME MAKER - First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER - Steam News

    First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER Hello everyone, my name is Morino and I am the producer for ACTION GAME MAKER. I’m planning to do a series of these letters as we move towards ACTION GAME MAKER’s release, and I’d like to start off by providing some information about our thoughts regardi...

    ACTION GAME MAKER - First Producer’s Letter for ACTION GAME MAKER - Steam News

    > However, despite all the attention Godot has been receiving, the switch from Godot 3 to Godot 4 called for the removal of Godot’s visual scripting system. This presented us with an amazing opportunity. We knew we needed to provide more to our users, and now Godot was lacking in a function that we know really well! And that’s how the current plan was kicked off.

    Makes me wonder if they'll do something similar for RPG Maker if AGM does well enough commercially, since the RPG Maker Unite, which was supposed to work with Unity, died thanks to that charge the devs per-install kerfuffle.

    0
    ICastFist I Cast Fist @programming.dev

    Just your typical internet guy with questionable humor

    Posts 107
    Comments 3.5K